Murder Saves Face

by Haughton Murphy

  “Mr. Genakis?” Frost asked.

  “That’s me,” the younger man said, warily shaking his visitor’s hand. Genakis, slightly built, had a gaunt, and not necessarily friendly, face. His hair was uncombed and he had not shaved.

  “How about some coffee?” he asked, leading Frost down a narrow hallway to a living room. “I didn’t get up until after your call and made some then. It’s fresh.” He looked haggard and worried, but the tone of his voice was even.

  “Sorry if I woke you.”

  “That’s all right. It’s just that I was up all night—the police, calling Julie’s parents—and didn’t get to sleep until about six this morning. Did you say you wanted coffee?”

  “If it’s no trouble.”

  “Cream and sugar?”

  “Yes.”

  Frost looked around the room carefully once his host had gone to the kitchen. He had counted on finding a sleek, modern apartment, with spare, minimalist furniture, perhaps because he expected all young people in New York to have such quarters. The lines of the room he was in, including a large picture window overlooking the plaza, were quite grand, but the furniture was without distinction and seemed worn, even shabby. The only aspect of the decor that met Reuben’s expectations were the prints on the wall—a cool Richard Diebenkorn abstract, which Reuben liked enormously, and an Ed Ruscha that included the painted word “S-T-R-E-S-S,” which he did not like at all. Merriman, and presumably Genakis, were loyal Californians, Reuben decided.

  “Sorry this place is so cramped,” Genakis said. He was almost frenetic as he handed Reuben the coffee mug he was carrying, then hurried back to the kitchen for a spoon and a paper napkin. “When Julie and I went in on my restaurant, we used up every cent we had. There wasn’t anything left to buy furniture for this place. So we moved in the old stuff we’d been using. I know it looks like a thrift shop, but we had to make do with it. Now I guess it doesn’t matter any more.” Frost waited, thinking Genakis might elaborate, might speak more directly about the murder. When he did not, Frost launched into the condolences he had rehearsed in his mind on the trip downtown.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Genakis. As I told you on the telephone, I want to express to you the sympathy of everyone at Chase & Ward at this ghastly occurrence—”

  “Everyone?” Genakis cut in.

  “Why, yes, I think so. Everyone I’ve talked to liked Ms. Merriman and those who matter thought she was doing fine work.”

  Genakis laughed bitterly. “Everyone liked her, did they? Except somebody at Chase & Ward mad enough to strangle her.”

  “You think someone from the firm murdered her?”

  “I wish I knew. One of the reasons I was up all night was trying to figure out who it could have been. I drew a blank. But it must have been somebody from that frigging office. It’s guarded so tight a killer couldn’t just walk in off the street.”

  “I take it you’ve been there?”

  “Sure. Julie was real proud of the place and used to invite me up once in a while.”

  “Do you have any suspicions? Any hunches?” Reuben asked.

  “No, I don’t. As far as I know, Julie didn’t have an enemy in the world.”

  “Did she talk much about her work?”

  “Oh, yes. She loved what she was doing and couldn’t help but talk about it. She used to get disgusted with people—mostly outsiders she had to deal with. And she’d get bored sometimes. But I never heard her mention anybody that she thought was her enemy. There were a couple of young guys she thought were too ambitious, were trying too hard. But she just laughed at them and I doubt they knew how she felt.”

  “So you don’t think there were any contemporaries, rivals for becoming a partner, that might have done this?”

  “Maybe there were, but I don’t know who they are. And I don’t think she did.”

  “What about the partners she worked for?”

  “She’d joke about them. I don’t remember anything negative, except a few times when she thought they were working her too hard.”

  “How about secretaries and what we call service staff? Did she ever have a fight with any of them? Cost any of them their jobs? Complain about them?”

  “Not that I know of. She thought her own secretary was terrific.”

  “Who was that? Do you remember the name?”

  “Mary Coward.”

  “Oh, good heavens. I know her. She’s been around almost as long as I have. A nice person.”

  “Julie liked her a lot.”

  “How long had you known Ms. Merriman?” Frost asked.

  “We’ve been together a long time. I can tell you the story if you want, but it’ll take a while.”

  “Go ahead. I’m curious.”

  “We met out in Palo Alto,” Genakis said, speaking fast. “I’m from Chicago and drifted west around nineteen seventy-eight. I ended up in Palo Alto, took a course or two at Stanford and supported myself doing odd jobs—roofing, bookshelves, all kinds of stuff. Then I got a job as a short-order cook, and what do you know? I liked it. I went to work in a real restaurant with a serious chef, and then went to culinary school for a year, up with Alice Waters in Berkeley. By eighty-two, I was a chef in a place myself. That’s when I met Julie, who was finishing her first year of law school.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “You mean, how did a lowly cook meet the lady lawyer? Well, the place I was working was pretty fancy. California French, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I do.” Frost tried not to let his features express his feelings about “California French.”

  “You wouldn’t exactly say it was a students’ hangout. Julie came there one night with her parents. It was part of my thing to walk around the dining room—you know, in my whites and my toque—and greet each table. When I saw Julie, I flipped. She was beautiful in about the most far-out way I’d ever seen. I made small talk with the Merrimans longer than I should, looking at Julie the whole time. By the end of it, I knew her name was Juliana and that she was in the law school. Her old man paid the check with a credit card, so I figured I was searching for Juliana Merriman—unless her old lady had remarried—and, sure enough, I found her through the law school.

  “I think she was excited when I went to the trouble of looking her up,” Genakis went on, still talking rapidly, but calmly. “I’m a pretty single-minded guy. If I’m making tonight’s dinner, I concentrate on tonight’s dinner. If I’m chasing the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, I zero in on that. Julie didn’t know what hit her, and in three weeks she’d moved out of the law school dormitory into my apartment. It was great. We were so different it was funny, but that made our lives together even better.

  “That’s the way it went for two years. I did well at the restaurant, even got cut into owning a small piece of it. Julie kept plugging through law school. The good news was she made the law review, the bad news that this kept her so busy that I saw less of her. But we juggled our time as best we could and had as much of a ball as our schedules allowed.

  “Julie originally wanted to go up to San Francisco to work. She was offered jobs all over the place, but she got suspicious. She decided the firms were all too in-bred—too much nepotism, too much hiring of client’s sons. And too many men and not enough women.

  “Then she got this invitation to clerk for a judge here in New York. Name of Kendall. Ramsey Kendall. You know him?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. He’s an excellent judge.”

  “She wanted to take it, but she was a little afraid of coming here, and she kept saying she didn’t want to leave me. I told her she should go for it, and she finally did.”

  “You stayed in California?” Reuben asked. He was finding Genakis, despite the California clichés, very articulate. He had overcome his earlier wariness and seemed eager, even relieved, to be talking to Frost and was not at all as disoriented as Charlie Parkes had described.

  “That’s right. I was doing real good and, besides, it was only supp
osed to be for a year. Then she got a job with your firm and decided to stay on. We became another bicoastal couple. It was rough. Julie could really only get away on the weekends—the busiest times for me at the restaurant. Why doesn’t the law business have the equivalent of Monday nights?”

  “We do, Mr. Genakis. But our Monday nights can be anytime. And we never know when they’re going to occur.”

  “After two years, we decided the bicoastal commuting was too much. And too expensive. Julie persuaded me to come to New York and give the restaurant business here a try.

  “I’d wanted to open my own place in Palo Alto—the partnership deal I had there wasn’t working out too great. So I thought, why not New York? ‘King of the hill, top of the heap’—you know the line. I had some savings, and Julie had her good salary, and we were lucky to get a bank loan. Julie had worked on First Fiduciary stuff when she first came to your firm, so she had some contacts there, which was a big help. So we took the plunge and I started Marshall’s.”

  “How’s it doing?”

  “Okay. Okay. It was real popular after it opened, but business is off a little now. Still okay, though. Ever been there?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. But I’ve heard of it.”

  “You’ll have to come for dinner some night.”

  “Thank you, I’d like to do that. May I ask you a personal question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Were you and Juliana married?”

  “No. Neither of us wanted that entanglement. Our arrangement was just fine. Oh, maybe if we’d decided to have kids, we’d have thought differently about it. The subject would come up every so often, and we’d discuss it for about ten seconds.”

  “I’m curious. With all your joint arrangements, the loan on the restaurant, for example, I would have thought it would have been simpler to be married.”

  “Maybe so, but it would have been more complicated to get divorced.”

  “An interesting point of view, Mr. Genakis.”

  “Well, that’s the way it was, okay?” Genakis said coolly. He was getting restless, and Frost took the hint.

  “Let me say just one thing before I go. Although I’m retired from Chase & Ward, Charles Parkes, the Executive Partner, has more or less put me in charge of the investigation of Juliana’s death. The police, of course, will be involved. I assume they’ve talked to you.”

  “Oh, yes. They’re the ones that brought me the good news and then stayed around for about two hours,” Genakis said, bitterly.

  “What did you tell them?”

  “About what I’ve told you.”

  “For two hours?”

  “There were a lot of repeats.”

  “In any event, I will be following the investigation for the firm. So, if there’s anything else you’d like to tell me, or if anything of interest comes to your attention, please call me. Here’s my card.”

  “Thanks. And drop by the restaurant some evening. Just call an hour or so ahead and we’ll take care of it.”

  “Mrs. Frost and I will do that,” Reuben said, pausing beside his host at the front door. “Oh, by the way. Where were you Thursday night?”

  Genakis looked away, then replied in the same steady voice he had used throughout his conversation with Frost. “You mean, what’s my alibi? I cooked Julie an early dinner here at the apartment. A real good dinner, because I figured she’d be working late. Blanquette de veau, one of her favorites. Then she went back, and I went off to the restaurant where I stayed till after one. Now that I’m out front, instead of in the kitchen, I’m the main man on the door most nights.”

  “What about yesterday morning?”

  “Beth Locke called up and asked where she was. With the hours you make your lawyers work, I just assumed she’d had an all-nighter and was still there somewhere, or maybe had gone out to breakfast. Then your security guy called, and I started to get worried. He said he’d check the hospitals, call the police if necessary, and keep in touch with me. So I went off to the restaurant. Then—”

  “The police came.”

  “Yeah. It was all over.” Genakis looked distressed, but still kept his composure.

  “Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Genakis.”

  “And thank you for coming by,” Genakis replied, but in such an expressionless way that Reuben could not tell whether he really meant what he said.

  *Michael Gilbert, Smallbone Deceased (1950).

  CHAPTER

  8

  Starting the New Year Wrong

  After Woody Allen gave up his New Year’s Eve parties, New York’s gossip columnists searched desperately to identify the City’s most “in” end-of-the-year celebration. They finally concluded that Anne Westbury Clifton’s soiree, at her elegant Gramercy Park mansion, filled the bill.

  Unlike Woody’s erratically scheduled event, Mrs. Clifton’s party was held each year without fail. It did resemble the Allen party in that food, drink and service were all of the highest order; the principal difference was that there were hundreds fewer guests at Mrs. Clifton’s. Attendance was limited to forty, the capacity of the five round tables for eight that fit comfortably into her dining room.

  Most of the guests, including the Frosts, had been coming to the Clifton party for many years, though the hostess always seemed to keep a few of the places available for those passing through New York temporarily, usually from Hollywood or London.

  Mrs. Clifton’s late husband, dead now for almost fifteen years, had been a powerful and generously compensated partner in one of the most eminent Wall Street houses. When he died, he had left his widow a comfortable fortune that she spent on adventurous travel, carefully selected charities—and parties.

  Anne Clifton entertained in a quietly spectacular fashion, assisted by a large and experienced staff and Raoul Jouvet, her imaginative and often daring chef. The combination of her great charm and wit and her impeccably appointed house (a large and prominently displayed oil portrait of her two poodles the only demerit) made her without question one of the City’s great hostesses. An invitation from her was coveted, and none more so than one for New Year’s eve.

  Reuben and Cynthia, as always, had looked forward to the evening and now stood by the window in the spacious Clifton living room, looking out on the shadows of Gramercy Park across the way. They were each wearing Christmas presents—she a Mary McFadden creation with a dramatically beaded bodice, he a silk brocade waistcoat with his tuxedo. (He had harbored some doubts about his wife’s colorful gift to him, but now it cheered him up and he thought its peacock-like aspects just fine.)

  The two of them savored their champagne (no stinting here; it was Dom Perignon generously doled out by the attentive waiters in black-tie) and eagerly helped themselves from the bounteous silver bowl of caviar placed on a table near where they were standing. As they looked around, they marveled at the variety of the assembly. Within sight were a well-known architect, a philanthropist who had given his name to one of the new galleries at the Metropolitan Museum, the British ambassador to the United Nations, and a Hollywood matinee idol, now living in retirement in New York. The prominent guests were not all men: a tough-minded city planner whose very name sent shudders down the spines of the City’s more aggressive developers; an editor who had become the adoptive grandmother, or at least the doting aunt, of a group of young novelists, who turned out their miniaturist works under her tutelage; a landscape painter whose energetic inventiveness continued even in late middle age.

  If there were common traits among the guests, they were high professional success and relatively advanced age. A prominent television commentator and the director of the hit movie of the Christmas season (one of the strays not on the permanent guest list) were, in their late forties, the youngest people in the room. With the notable and quite sensational exception of the director’s companion, Sallie Grassi, the deliciously beautiful star of his new movie.

  Leaving these three aside, the triumphs of most of the guests had not occurred recently
: one was a brilliant journalist, but his reportage had been for the old Herald-Tribune; another, a popular composer, had been the toast of Broadway, but for witty revues presented in the forties and fifties; another, a university president who had retired, exhausted, after the turmoil of 1968 and the hectic years immediately following. And the three or four who had been in government service—high government service—had been appointees under Truman or Eisenhower, not the later Presidents.

  A feeling of uxoriousness pervaded the room. Nearly all the guests were married, except for the perennial bachelor book reviewer from the Times and an Episcopal rector who was a recent widower. To be sure, the women present were not all first wives and at least one of the guests had been involved in a scandalous divorce. But that had been years ago. The only avowed homosexual, and the avowal had always been very private and discreet, was Gavrin Lyons, the lieder singer and Mrs. Clifton’s erudite and witty “date” for the evening.

  The crowd was also as notable for what it was not as for what it was. Except for Judge Ramsey Kendall, Reuben was sure he was the only lawyer present, and probably only there because of his wife’s involvement with the arts. Despite the roots of the Clifton fortune in Wall Street, there were none of the financial leverage artists who attended the more glittery parties so often covered in print. It was unlikely that conversation at Mrs. Clifton’s would turn to takeovers or the stock market. And the crowd was all-white apart from Margaret Dotson, the sensational mezzo-soprano in town for a series of appearances as Azucena in the Metropolitan Opera’s Il Trovatore. Dotson gave stiff competition to Sallie Grassi in the decorations department. Tall, with a diva’s formidable poitrine, she wore a capacious dark green gown that seemed to be composed of layer upon layer of silk, set off by a richly hued and grand red turban. The total overpowering effect was heightened by Dotson’s gestures and orotund voice, which could only be described, not surprisingly, as operatic.